The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 - 5
Ohio State fans give a Michigan fan a piece of their "ind at last year's showdown in Colurnbus. The new documentary "Michigan vs. Ohio State: The Rivalry" examines the rivalry's cultural undercurrents.
Beyond the gridiron
Doc sees Michigan-
Ohio State rivalry as
less about football,
more about culture
By NATE SANDALS
Daily Sports Editor
Anyone who has spent alate Novem-
ber afternooninAnnArbor or Colum-
bus knows "The Game" is an event
best experienced in three dimensions.
Television does it no justice.
HBO's new sports documentary,
"Michigan vs. Ohio State: The Rival-
ry," which airs tonight at 10:30 p.m.,
doesn't recreate the madness you'll
see in the Big House this Saturday, but
it thoroughly portrays the cultural
phenomenon that has sprung from
The Game.
In 60 minutes, "The Rivalry" cap-
tures the underlying differences that
make Michigan vs. Ohio State so
much more than a football game. As
Michigan students
it's not hard to rec-
ognize the fanati-
cism that goes into Michigan vs.
the rivalry, but the Ohio State:
documentary makes
it accessible even to The Rivalry
those who haven't Tonight at
been inside the Big Tonightat
House. 10:30 p.m.
"The Rivalry" HBO
shows that the
Michigan-OSU game acts as proxy
for a hatred that extends well beyond
the football field. Despite only being
divided by an arbitrary line drawn by
a surveyor in the 19th century, Ohio-
ans and Michiganders are different,
and "The Rivalry" doesn't shy away
from that fact.
The core of the documentary is the
delineation of the cultural, social and
economic differences between Michi-
gan fans and Ohio State fans. HBO
is right to make this the centerpiece.
The Wolverine faithful will be happy
to see themselves cast as the intellec-
tual elite of the Midwest, while their
neighbors to the South are shown,
quite frankly, as part of a less-edu-
cated set.
The film's weakness is in its por-
trayal of the most important part
of the rivalry, the 10 Year War. The
matchups between Woody Hayes and
Bo Schembechler are the stuff of leg-
end, and rightly so. While "The Rival-
ry" has humorous, even hilarious,
footage of each coach at his happiest
and most angry, depending on each
year's outcome, the discussion doe'sn't
translate well into the cultural differ-
ences the documentary tries to stress
throughout.
"The Rivalry" also features Schem-
bechler's final filmed interview before
his death. There are no outstanding
insights into his life or the rivalry
as a result, but the knowledge that it
was his filmed during his final trip to
MichiganStadiumispoignantenough.
The documentary doesn't overdo the
melancholy, but it comes close.
Some will argue the documentary
slants in favor of Ohio State - thereis
much more footage of Ohio Stadium
than the Big House, more time with
Jim Tresselthan Lloyd Carr - butthis
is a result more of circumstance than
bias. The documentary was filmed
around last year's epic match-up fea-
turing the two undefeated teams, and
while it still hurts to see those scar-
let-painted hooligans tearing up the
field nearly one year ago today, it's no
secret Ohio State won the game. To
the victor go the spoils, at least for
this hour.
But things would have been dif-
ferent had Michigan won last year's
game. No doubt, Michigan fans would
have been pleased to see endless shots
of crying Buckeyes had the game
turned out the other way.
"The Rivalry" is another in a long
line of well-produced sports docu-
mentaries from HBO. On film, you
can't capture the magic of The Game,
but HBO proves you can reproduce
the power of culture in the greatest
rivalry in sports.After you watch, Sat-
urday won't come fast enough.
Redford's
ineffective
political
capital
By IMRAN SYED
Daily Arts Writer
. Shaped by the explosive leftist
movement of the 1960s, Robert
Redford is the indelible Holly-
wood liberal. But hell-raising just
ain't what it used to be in the Viet-
nam days.
An entire gen-
eration may have
come to know **
Redford as a
political instiga- LiOfs for
for for his roles Lambs
in films like "The
Candidate" and At Quality 16
"All the Presi- and Showcase
dent's Men," but United Artists
does any of that
capital translate
to a new era, a new war, a new
corrupt White House and, most
* important, a new generation of
America's best and brightest?
"Lions for Lambs" - a commen-
tary on post Sept.11 politics in
America directed by and starring
Redford - provides at best a mud-
dled answer to that question.
With a trio of parallel storylines
that are a little too easy to follow,
"Lions for Lambs" features Red-
ford as the aging Professor Mal-
ley at "a California university." He
The future of
TV? Bleak
O fall the single-syllable
words to chant in pub-
lic, "strike" is probably
the least fun. "Fight" is an old
classic because, well, it's kind
of fun to watch people fight. I
guess that's a little fucked up,
but it's dif-
ficult to deny
the simple
pleasurest
of egging
on public, {
non-WBC
sanctioned
bouts. And ACAEL
if "Arrested IAN
Development"
has taught us anything it's that
a large group of people simul-
taneously chanting "speech" to
no one in particular at a family
function makes for good televi-
sion, if nothing else.
But "strike" is a different ani-
mal. It's not even an imperative
command like the others; you're
just repeatingsomethingyou've
done. We get it. And from an
outsiders perspective it means
not getting somethingyou want
for an isdefinite amount of
time, which is why the strike
that rocked the entertainment
world last week is so devastat-
ing.
After what seems like years
of posturing by both sides, the
Broadway stagehands are final-
ly on strike. It's unclear how
PTESY OFU UNI
long it will take to bring the
stagehands back to work, but
the likelihood of seeing Oprah's
play this weekend is slim.
Oh, and the Writers Guild of
America is on strike, too.
At this point it should be
clear to anyone who's been fol-
lowing the Guild's situation that
the near future is bleak. Cur-
rently the writers receive basi-
cally none of the revenue that's
generated through new media
outlets including DVDs, Inter-
net downloads and streaming
advertisement revenue, and
they're not going backto work
until that's resolved - well, at
least that's what they're saying
It's not just
news. The
strike is going
to affect you.
now. The Guild certainly has a
legitimate argument consider-
ing the rapid development of
new media in the industry, but
the two parties aren't even in
negotiations anymore, and net-
works will always be able to fill
See PASSMAN, Page 8
"Marathon? She ask me about a marathon
has a slacker student named Todd
who he thinks can be brilliant,
so he calls him into his office to
discuss why Todd seems to have
given up on college and the future.
The discussion that follows is a
fine example of everything that's
wrong with America, according
to the aging hippie generation
- Todd is defensive, argumenta-
tive and completely uninterested
in taking advice and working
to change America's "bullshit"
political culture. So, Prof. Mal-
ley decides to tell him about "the
last two students who gave him
hope."
Natu
were ec
underr
Ev
zec
so
who or
becaus
But they worked hard, excelled in
orally, those two students schoolandcomeSept.11,answered
conomically disadvantaged, the call by joining the military
epresented minorities - despite strong disapproval from
Malley, a former Vietnam veteran
who had protested the war upon
ren righteous his return. As Todd and Malley
sit chatting, those two soldiers
al needs some (Arian and Ernest) are deployed
on a secret special operation in
phistication. Afghanistan. The operation goes
awry, and two of America's bright-
est young minds are injured and
trapped on a hostile mountaintop
sly got into the university during a merciless blizzard.
e of sports scholarships. See LIONS, Page 8